How Long Does a Dog Groom Take? Booked Times by Size

The Slot and the Visit

Ask a groomer how long a groom takes and you get the length of the booking: the part of the day the dog holds a groomer. Ask an owner and they mean something else, which is when they can come back. Both are fair questions, and the second answer is longer.

Most of this post is the first number, measured. In September 2026 we read the online booking pages of Australian grooming salons and wrote down how long each one books, by service and by the size of the dog. We ended up with full-groom times from 65 salons, most of them found in 40 suburbs and towns drawn at random. Salons we know to be Petboost customers were left out, and the method is in the sources at the end.

The second half turns the range into one length a dog can actually be booked for.

What Salons Book for a Full Groom

A full groom here means a clip all over, with the bath and dry included. "Typical" is the median salon. The middle half runs from the salon a quarter of the way up the list to the one three quarters of the way up, which says more than the full range would, because eleven salons book every dog for the same length whatever its size.

The small dog figure barely moves. It stays at an hour and a half however we cut the sample, and capital cities and regional towns book it the same. Medium holds at an hour and three quarters in all but one cut, which puts it at about two hours. Large and giant move more: large between two hours and two and a quarter, giant between about two hours and two hours forty, depending on which salons are counted.

Size does most of the work. Inside the same salon, a large dog is booked a median 45 minutes longer than a small one (49 salons), and a dog over 30 kg an hour longer (36 salons). Medium is the odd one out. It adds a median 15 minutes, and 22 of 58 salons book small and medium dogs for exactly the same time.

Six salons book a full groom for less than an hour, and we left them out. The two that explain it on their own pages use the short slot as an arrival time.

Other Services

Typical booking in minutes, with the number of salons in brackets.

The giant style groom rests on 13 salons, so hold it loosely. Some services are too thin to table at all. The handful of salons that time hand-stripping book two to three hours for it. A puppy's introduction groom is a median 90 minutes across the 20 salons that list one, too few to split by size. A bath with a towel dry comes in at about 30 minutes, but fewer than ten salons offer one at each size.

Coat Adds Time, Though Less Than Size

Few salons time coats separately. The ones that do let us compare like with like: one salon's own short-coat time against its long or double-coat time for the same service and size.

Apart from the full groom, only the long-coat rows rest on more than ten salons. The double-coat rows rest on four to six salons each and the full-groom row on four, so take them as a direction. We also couldn't pull long silky coats apart from curly ones, because salons that split by coat put poodles, oodles, Maltese and Shih Tzus in the same "long" group.

Read together, a double coat adds something like 15 to 40 minutes to a booking and a long coat usually less. Neither moves the booking as far as going from a small dog to a large one does.

Matting is not in these numbers. It changes the price as well as the time, and What to Charge When the Coat Is Worse Than Booked deals with both.

The Visit Runs Longer Than the Booking

The booking is the groomer's time. How long the dog is away from home is a different number, and salons that talk about it describe something longer.

Thirteen salons say in their own words how long a full groom takes, and the typical answer is two to three hours. Sixteen describe how long the dog will be with them. Their answers usually top out at three hours, and several say four or more. One salon books full grooms in 30 to 60 minute slots and tells owners, on the same booking page, that the appointment usually takes two to three hours. Several ask owners to collect within 30 to 60 minutes of a text saying the dog is ready, and charge a late fee after that.

Six other salons skip the length altogether and publish a drop-off window, usually a morning drop-off that closes somewhere between 9:30 and noon, with pick-up in the afternoon.

So when an owner asks how long, the useful answer is the visit. You can give them that and still keep the booked length on your own calendar.

Turning a Range Into a Length You Can Book

A booking page can't book a range. It needs one length for each dog, and that length has to be settled before the dog arrives.

Petboost is our product and we make money when you use it, so weigh this section with that in mind.

One service per size. A service in Petboost has one duration, so the full-groom table becomes four services, Full Groom (Small) through Full Groom (Giant), each with its own length. Give each a range under Weight Restrictions and a dog can only book the size its weight fits. A coat that changes the whole job can have a service of its own, the way a de-shed usually does. If you don't have your own times yet, the medians above are a fair first guess for a salon. Five working days of timing real grooms will show where yours differ, which is the method in How Many Pets a Day Is Sustainable?.

Extra time that follows the dog. Most coat time belongs on the dog rather than on the menu, because the double coat turns up at every visit whatever the owner books. In Petboost a pet attribute can carry booking properties, and one of them is a Duration change. Give a Double Coat attribute 30 minutes of Additional time and a dog carrying it is booked 30 minutes longer, with Petboost only offering times that have room for it. Less time works the other way. If a dog carries two attributes that both change the time, the larger change applies and they don't add together. The same booking properties can add a surcharge, which is where the matted-coat post takes over, and Pet Attributes has the rest.

Padding for the part that isn't the groom. Cleaning down between dogs takes real time, and it shouldn't make the groom look longer to the owner. Under Settings, Duration & Timing, Advanced options, Appointment Padding holds Buffer time before appointments and Buffer time after appointments, from 15 minutes up, and any service can set its own. Owners never see padding as part of the service, and it isn't charged.

Telling owners the visit. On each service, Duration & Timing has a card called Times customers see. Set the drop-off side to A window and the booking page and reminders show a drop-off window instead of the exact start. Set the pick-up side the same way and the owner gets a pick-up window around the time the groom should finish. Staff still see the booked times, and neither window changes how many dogs fit in the day. To show no clock at all, A message instead of a time shows wording such as Morning. A Receptionist Asked Us to Remove the Drop-Off Window makes the case for keeping one.

Petboost has no per-groomer pace: a service takes the same time whoever grooms the dog. If a newer groomer needs longer, set a later end time when you book their dogs, or turn Drag Lock off and drag the booking longer on the calendar. An add-on has no time of its own either, so extra minutes go on the service or the dog.

Many salons in this sample publish their times through general booking tools, Fresha, Square Appointments, Timely and Wix among them. They handle one length per service well, and a size menu works in any of them. They book a client rather than a dog, though, so the size and coat come from whatever the owner picks off the menu, and nothing recorded about the dog can change the length.

Once every service has an honest length, the capacity calculator turns those minutes into a day: how many dogs your groomers and your tables or dryers can hold, and whether one more of either would add any.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a full groom take for a small dog?

A typical Australian salon books about an hour and a half, and the middle half of salons book between an hour and a quarter and two hours. The dog is usually away for longer: salons that describe the visit typically say two to three hours.

How long does a bath and blow-dry take?

About 45 minutes for a small dog at the typical salon and an hour for a medium or large one. Dogs over 30 kg are booked for about 70 minutes.

Does a double coat take longer to groom?

Yes. At the few salons that time coats separately, a double coat adds about 15 minutes to a bath and blow-dry and closer to 40 to a tidy or a de-shed. Four to six salons sit behind each of those figures, and size changes the booking more.

How long is a puppy's first groom?

The 20 salons that list a puppy introduction groom book a median of 90 minutes for it.

Sources

• Petboost, sample of Australian grooming salons' booking times, checked 27 September 2026. Not published separately; the method is below.
• Petboost, Pet Services Price Index: the pool of Australian locations the sample was drawn from, and the published-prices method it adapts.

How the sample was drawn. We drew 40 locations at random from the 65 Australian suburbs and towns in our price index pool, searched Google Maps for dog grooming salons in each, then read each salon's website and online booking page. The six pool locations in the ACT, Tasmania and the Northern Territory that the draw missed were added so every state and territory was tried. Another 20 businesses came from Fresha's Australian pet grooming listing and one search result; they appear only in the pooled figures. Nothing was booked and no form was submitted. Some booking systems' pages could not be read, so salons that use only those are missing.

What counts. 105 businesses gave a usable length. 77 publish it where an owner can read it, on a booking page such as Fresha, Square Appointments, Timely or Wix, or in their own words. For the other 28 the only source is the service length set in a pet-specific booking system, which its public booking page loads, and we could not confirm the page shows it to owners. Leaving those 28 out changes nothing at the top of the table: the salons in the 46 pool locations that show a length on their booking page give 90, 105, 120 and 150 minutes from small to giant. The tables are salons only, without the three mobile groomers, and take one figure per salon per cell before the median and middle half across salons. Size comes from the salon's kilogram band where it gives one, otherwise from its size label.

What was left out. The six salons whose full-groom slot is under an hour. A salon whose booking page lists 60 minutes for every service while its own website lists one hour to two and a half by service (we used the website). One 20-hour bath that is plainly a typo. No salon in the Northern Territory publishes a length, and Tasmania rests on three salons.